at the University of Nebraska at Kearney

Summer 2008
By Valerie Vierk, Buffalo County Coordinator

Since the University is building a new heating plant on the site where my two martin houses have been located for about five years, in spring 2008 I moved them across the Kearney Canal to “the west bank.” I worried the martins might not accept their new location, but the day we were digging a new hole to mount one of them, we heard and saw martins close. By the next day the martins had found their house in a slightly different location. They accepted it and moved in.

On May 29 Kearney was hit by six tornadoes. I heard the reports while at work and decided I didn’t want to stay in town for the evening so I “made a run for it.” I made it home the 30 miles to Ravenna, but was worried about my martins all night. Ravenna wasn’t affected by the tornadoes; just some moderate wind. The next morning I showed up for work as I hadn’t heard that we did not need to report to campus for work. I held my breath as I drove toward the site of the martin house. As I feared, I couldn’t see the house, but when I peered down the steep bank I saw the house leaning only about two feet off the ground, with six or seven brave little martins perched on it! I was surprised that they would perch that close to the ground, but happy they were all right and obviously loyal to their home. There were no dead ones in the house or in the area outside the house.

Kearney had received so much rain in the week or so previous to the tornado night that I surmised the ground just was so saturated that the ground socket had listed. Of course, the high wind added to it, but since the house wasn’t damaged, I believe it went down slowly. I was able to straighten the pole back up and raise the house. I placed a black garbage sack around the pole, and then put bricks on it to try to keep the rain from loosening the pole again, and this seemed to work. We had high winds a few days later, but the house stayed up.

Later in the spring I erected the other house but the heavy pole would not lock, thus the house kept sliding down to about a five foot height. The martins explored it, but did not nest because it was too low.

Upon cleaning out the south house in September I found that about six pair had nested. There were a couple of other partial martins nests too. Possibly these were first year martins and didn’t quite have the knack of homemaking.